EA opens Quebec studio

By
08.14.2003 :: 7:33AM EST

Electronic Arts is opening a development studio in Montreal, Quebec. The company is in the process of trying to find just the right spot for the facility, but expects to have the studio up and running and working on new projects by the end of the year. Alain Tascan will be the VP and Studio GM of the new site; he will also help recruit the new development team. “We've had a lot of success growing our studio headquarters in British Columbia,” said EA Worldwide Studio President Don Mattrick. “However, we know there are a lot of talented people who prefer to live and work in the Northeast. After considering several cities in the U.S. and Canada, we decided that Montreal offered the best combination of creative talent, technology infrastructure and favorable economics.” If you're interested and talented check out the Montreal job site. The announcement comes about a week after EA announced a move of its LA HQ to a new quarter of a million square foot facility in the Playa Del Rey section of Los Angeles. The company says it will be hiring an extra 300 to 500 developers for that location by the end of the decade. Man, someone's making a bunch of money.

USER COMMENTS 73 comment(s)

EA…..(10:52am EST Thu Aug 14 2003)..Taking over the world, one bland crappy texture at a time…… – by exps2player….

canadian colleges are pumping out (12:05pm EST Thu Aug 14 2003)CS and graphic designers like crazy and since they don't have the US govenment to allow wintel to put them out of work, it's a great place to start a development site. – by video gamer

Of course it makes economic sense. Sell software primarily to US and pay Canadian developers. The get a nice bargain on the exchange rate.

More and more of this 'outsourcing' crap. Go US. Pretty soon we all will be working at McDonalds. – by Froggy

re: Froggy(1:09pm EST Thu Aug 14 2003)look at it this way, when the US dollar tanks, all the jobs will come back ! – by Canuk

The outsourcing WHINE again!(1:57pm EST Thu Aug 14 2003)Common, it used to be that Chicago and Detroit would compete for jobs. Now nations compete in the same way. Just because the rest of the world would like a little of America's unbelievable wealth to get make their lives better should be applauded. American workers can find something new because of the freedom of the country. The greed of the average American is what pissed of the rest of the world. – by J.

And opening up studios in Canada isn't really outsourcing if you think about it, Canada is practically the 51st state, and many of the big Canadian and American companies are listed on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, so the companies are owned by both parties. Where the company is headquartered really is irrelevant. The truth of the matter is that you guys are just 10 times as big as us, so you lay claim to the company entirely as your own.

Nortel has thousands of employees in Texas and it's based out of Brampton Ont. Canada.

word – by a CDN electrical eng

outsourcing shmoutsourcing(3:35pm EST Thu Aug 14 2003)Isn't EA a Canadian company employing Canadians in a Canadian city? Not all jobs start out as American jobs, you know?

Yea, I agree… Fortunately they have Mods for that… HA HA HA!!! – by jmo-327

Montral Canadian(11:20pm EST Thu Aug 14 2003)This is good. When i graduate from college i am very likely to get job. – by Jean-Guy

Globalization and Gaming(5:10am EST Fri Nov 19 2004)Hmm. I'm working on my MA in Communication and performing a pilot case study on EA Canada as a possible model of globalization. If you have any feedback on the 'outsourcing' of jobs or the use of foreign (particularly Canadian) labor to gain an economic edge I would love to hear from you.